Living local in Eugene, OR
Posted in Eugene/Southern Willamette Valley, Markets & farms, Uncategorized on Oct 16th, 2011
Saturday morning, we paid a visit to two of our favorite local orchard farms. First we went to River Bend Farm & Pleasant HIll Orchard, which is a few miles west of Pleasant Hill. They have an attractive market store with their products nicely displayed.
We picked up a few apples to eat and a gallon of [...]
Posted in Eugene/Southern Willamette Valley, Recipes, Soups, Uncategorized on Oct 9th, 2011
This weekend we made our way to the coast range in search of chanterelle mushrooms, a food finding adventure in nature that we’ve been partaking in for the past few years. In a short span of arriving in the forest - which is all we have these days to keep our almost 2-year-old content on [...]
Posted in Eugene/Southern Willamette Valley, Markets & farms, Ramblings, Restaurants on May 8th, 2011
Christmas arrived on May 7. In a barn. In Creswell.
It was last December when Amy booked us for one of Heidi Tunnell Catering’s renowned Barn Dinners, a Christmas gift from her to me. It was a long time coming, and it was worth the wait.
Booking that far in advance is a bit extreme, but not a [...]
Posted in Eugene/Southern Willamette Valley, Holidays, Markets & farms on Nov 21st, 2010
My earliest years were spent on a diversified family farm. Our operation included sheep, cows and chickens. We phased out of raising animals and farming altogether when I was pretty young - at about 8 years of age. I was old enough to have an awareness and memory of the work involved, but too [...]
Posted in Eugene/Southern Willamette Valley, Markets & farms, Ramblings, Smoking/Dehydrating on Oct 19th, 2010
We became proud owners of a Big Chief electric smoker this summer, a find we made passing by a yard sale in our neighborhood. Smoking food wasn’t on my radar, but the unit was too eye-catching and the price was too right to pass it up. 15 bucks and it was ours.
It found a home [...]
Posted in Markets & farms, Meat on Aug 21st, 2010
It is albacore tuna season on the Oregon coast.
Our primary quest in visiting the Lane County Farmer’s Market today was to acquire some fresh sweet corn to accompany a pair of Laughing Stock Farm Pork Chops we had pulled from the freezer this morning.
What we didn’t anticipate was the seduction of fresh albacore tuna offered [...]
Posted in Eugene/Southern Willamette Valley, Markets & farms, Uncategorized on Jun 20th, 2010
Although we’ve had lousy weather for a good month here - a true damper on the area’s strawberries crops - there are still some good ones to be found.
Out of all the food preserving Amy has accomplished the past couple of years, my personal favorite - and there’ve been many great ones - is a [...]
Posted in Appetizer - dips, Eugene/Southern Willamette Valley, Garden, Recipes, Specialty stores, Uncategorized on Aug 16th, 2009
Buying a plant start of an unknown vegetable variety can be risky business. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This is a story about a winner.
Coming off of a successful tomatillo experience in 2008, we decided to expand our horizons this year. A few months ago we drove down to Territorial Seed Company in Cottage [...]
Posted in Markets & farms on Jul 27th, 2009
This week has been cherry madness in our house. We ended up canning 16 half pints of cherry jam, several pints of cherry dessert sauce, drying some, and still yet making two half gallons of cherry sherry and one half gallon of cherry vinegar. As Matt mentioned in his previous post, cherries are my favorite [...]
Posted in Markets & farms on Jul 20th, 2009
We had a great cherry orchard adventure this weekend at Hentze Family Farm. This fruit is my co-author’s favorite and they rate in my top 3. The farm hosted a festival on Saturday, but we went a day later.
We proceeded directly to the retail shop thinking we’d just pick up a few varieties and [...]
